Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

  In Palau, a small group of island just south of Guam, there were first only six masters of carving the stories, history, myths and personalities of that special culture. There is a certain peace in Palau that is unique in the world. It is living by the day, not watches and the normal ideas about time. You get up when the sun gets up, you work on your art- carving boards until it is time to eat, sleep and make love, and you finally rest for the day when the sun disappears into the sea as a green flash before darkness rolls in upon all who live there. It is called “Island Time.” During island time, there is a peace that comes upon each citizen and washes away all cares.

“OSIIK IS DEAD”, Shal said.  It was a statement with the glimmer of emotion in the voice.  Sano, Shal’s youngest son, said flatly, “A great Artist.”

      I nodded and felt the dull weigh of the statement inside me.  Osiik is dead.

     The three of us had been looking at a board that Shal was working on that morning in the shed behind the board-frame house.  The shed was covered with corrugated tin.  A bench and a table stood on the ground with unfinished boards on it, a raised platform was where Mrs. Shal usually sat to paint and finish the boars.  And I sat on a crate, watching the progress of the work.

     There was a rightness about the scene. It was how a storyboard carver should die.  In the middle of work and over a conversation about some other subject – fishing, or the quality of the wood, or the price of boards, or the use of plastic to cast stories, or taxes, or death in general.

     Shal said it again like a Palaman knell, “Osiik is dead.  We started carving together, He was sick for awhile.”

     When I got back to my house and looked at the free-form story of Meduu Ribtal (called The Breadfruit Story), I thought: “Well, Osiik, you don’t have to pay me the money I advanced you for a board a year ago,  your work just jumped in price three to five times.” And I had to smile because I knew that Osiik would have understood the thought.  He had been a good business – a friend, with a sense of humor.

    I had been after him about the money, He had always answered, “I’ll send you something when it is right,” It never came and I knew he played a game where it might never come.  But it was always an excuse to go and sit in his shop, talk, chew betel nut, remind him that he owed me, and learn about the craft of making story boards. Now, Osiik was dead and I would not see my money or the promised board.

It was later in the week that I learned that Osiik's death was only a rumor.

He really died a month later.

I can see him laughing at that, sitting on his raised polished wood platform, cross legged, with one foot holding a board on which he worked, telling his assistants what to do next on other works in progress, and watching children play outside. I think that he would have liked the idea of dying twice. It has a symbolic overtone. It cheats death of its sting, like one of his figures in his carving, who, happily dies with grace and beauty.

He once carved a board with the history of his own life as its subject, a completely unheard of thing for a Palauan carver to do. If he had the chance to do it, he would have carved a board with the words deeply cut: Osiik is dead. Osiik is dead, and then shown the magic of the design of the event.

Maybe that is a fitting tribute to the man. In the future, some young carver will tell the story of Osiik, engraved in the wood like the story of Demei of Airai.

I remember going back to Sbal's house and saying, "Did you hear that Osiik is dead, for real now? He was not dead that first time."

"Yes," Sbal said, "the first time was just a story from Palau, but now lie is dead."

Time magazine will not record the event like they did with Picasso's death. Osiik did not have the press.

      But he was no less a great artist.

     Within the tradition of Palauan carving, all the other artists in that society recognized that he was one of the innovators, one of the avant-garde. His name will be recorded in legend in Palau with Sbal, Baris, Ngiraibuuch, Riumd, and Bernadino Rdudaol.

     Osiik was an artist's artist.

      That's why we became friends. I went to his workshop because I admired his work. For me, he was the Matisse of Palau. His use of line and his rhythmic gesture to hold the viewer's attention were like Matisse's late collages. His work, on the surface, was simple — figures, trees, and bais before a deep-carved background. That is, his late work had this seemingly simple strength. It looked as if anyone could do it, but they did not, even though some tried.

From 1970, when I first saw one small Osiik board and bought it, not knowing anything of the artist, I wanted to meet him. It took three years for that to happen.

Robert Udick, publisher of Guam Publications, asked me to look into obtaining a storyboard for the lobby of the newspaper office in the spring of 1973. I asked a friend, Lydia Obak, daughter of a shell carver in Palau, to approach Osiik about carving a board that would be 38 1/2 feet long. She did the ground work and set the price, so much a square inch, to be executed in the "new style" using a traditional theme, the story of the First Natural Childbirth. He agreed to do it and said it would be finished May 15.

In June, I went to Palau to see why it was over­due.

The day I arrived, lie was carving on the story-board at the Osiik Handicraft Shop in the village of Ngermid, just below the Continental Hotel. With him was his son, three high school boys he was initiating to the craft, and another older carver.

     We talked of other things, as is customary in the warming-up period before more business-like mat­ters are brought forward. The beauty of Palau. Osiik was passionate on that. Fishing. Osiik smiled when he talked of that. Other boards and carvers. Osiik was knowing on that theme. The heat. Osiik shrugged it off. And then, finally, the storyboard.

We discussed the wood, Btaches. A hard wood, but less hard than Doort (like Guam's iron­wood) and harder than Las (called Nara wood by the Japanese). Our fingers ran over the surface, examining the varied smoothnesses, experiencing the sensual pleasure of the wood. Osiik said, "A hard wood. Good for indoors. Harder as it ages."

We discussed the stain and the wax — brown Kiwi Shoe Polish. Osiik mentioned in passing that most of the artists found this brand the best. It was applied by a cloth, a large brush, and a toothbrush. Finally, it was polished. Sometimes, black was rub­bed into the deep carving to make the figures stay out to their fullest. Osiik needed more polish. Even­tually, I bought out the shoe stores on Guam and sent it to him.

In the middle of a sentence Osiik resumed carving, a sign that it was a time for work, not talk.  So I sat clown and watched, and I drew him work­ing. What a face! And the hands showed the years of work. I thought of the hands on Michel­angelo's David. They were the hands of a sculptor, strong yet sensitive.

It was only later that I found out about Osiik's interest in other art forms. A friend who knew him well says that he collected tapes of a variety of kinds of music. He also choreographed Palauan dances at the Continental Hotel for the tourists. It was only later that I connected this knowledge with my first impression of his hands.

Osiik said that he would continue to make storyboards even if the tourists' interest evaporated, because he loved it. In his face, I saw that he en­joyed the fact that lie was known widely among fel­low Palauans because of his art.

He was proud of the fact that he did nothing else to make money except carve storyboards (as the Americans call them) or itabori (as the Japanese and the Palauans call them).

Each day, I would go to the shop, watch the carving and draw. Finally, Osiik explained why the work was behind schedule: "The sawmill had bro­ken down and there were no large pieces of wood on the island. So, first, my son and I had to repair the mill, drag the logs to the saw with the help of friends and neighbors, cut the boards to the desired thickness and length, let them age awhile, and then begin carving. The process of fixing the mill and cutting the logs has taken a whole month."

The late afternoon sun filtered through the palm leaves, crosshatching the carver's face. The young men roughed out the boards. The old assis­tant traced the master's pencil line with a V-chisel, and the activity of making art was scored by the flight of flies.

There was no time. Carving in wood, cutting into a virgin surface with the stories of the past —stories with a moral, hero stories, origin stories, pecking order stories, historical events, or funny stor­ies — made time a meaningless concept.

The past, all of it, and the dreams and inven­tions of the future, sat in that small hut, were guests at the feet of this Palauan carver, just as I sat there as a guest.

Osiik Eterohol sat where he wanted to be, do­ing what he loved to do — carve. If I would have tried to dramatize his importance in that moment, he would have turned his sense of humor upon me and showed the ridiculousness of making more out of it than it was. A man, his workshop, his work. Around him, his friends and his community.

      But, for me, it was more.

It was viewing a man who fit in his world, who could recapture the past of his own life and the life of his people with a line or two on a freshly sanded surface.

   At that moment, in 1973, Osiik was 54 years old. But he said he was 17 when he was trained by Hisakatsu Hidikata.

He was born in Ulimang in the district of Ngaraard on Babeldaob, and when he was 15 went to Japanese public school for two years. There he received training in carving and drawing. Later, after leaving school, he went to work making copra.

Hidikata came to Ulimang to give his crafts training program, and asked local teachers to recom­mend young men for his program. Osiik was one of those suggested.

Osiik, Sbal, and Ngiraibuuch attended Hidikata's school and learned the old carving, the old stories, and an attitude toward their craft. "Authenticity" was an idea that permeated all their work. Also, this idea gave each carver a consistent formula for compo­sition. A story. Figures. Trees. A bai. With all these older carvers, tins structure never varies and yet each man was able to invent, to create, and to express his individual self

       None did it better than Osiik.

     His work has the feeling of the old bai beams.

      There is a severity of form, simplicity. Some may even use the term, crude. But if it is, then the crude­ness is but a vehicle for elegant line work, for critical­ly selected detail, and for a monumentality that riv­als anyone's art in any time.

His society gave him his form. The very conserv­ativeness of how change happens in Palau sustained this form. One cannot make change without consensus. The paradox of this is that if an artist keeps the outward forms of tradition then he may create as wildly as his imaginative mind dictates. Osiik's person­ality, his humor, his sensitivity, his passion for exist­ence, gave his work its distinctive individuality, its originality.

If one wishes to see the man in his work, go to the Chase-Manhattan Building in Guam, in the Pacific Daily News lobby and stand in awe at his 38 ½ foot mural in wood.

Because that is where an artist is, in his work. It lives. It breathes for anyone fortunate enough to own one of his creations.

Sure, Osiik was a bit of a rascal at times. He still owes me money for a board that I did not get. I will not let him forget it when I see him again. But, as Alan Watts said, anyone who wishes to rise to the top of their profession has to be a bit of a rascal.

Osiik was never a con artist in his life, but he was a hustler. It takes one to know one. That is, a hustler can always back up what he professes; a con artist cannot.

     Osiik is dead.

    I know that now. This time it is for real.

    I will miss our friendship.

     He was and is a great modern artist.

     You don't believe me. Just ask his work.

     Or ask the other Palauan carvers who continue in "the new style."

In the West, we say, “Rest in Peace,” when someone dies. In Palau, since they are already peacefully resting and enjoying the life they lead, all the friends and relatives and admirers do when they hear, “Osiik is dead” is have a party to celebrate his life and tell stories, which in some hands will become carvings and new stories Peace is Palau and Palau is Peace. Of course, it is island style on island time. .